A cap rise means NFL players hitting free agency can be expecting some big paydays in their future. Of course as good as that is for them and as easy as it is to get caught up in handing out big money, that doesn’t necessarily make the deal a good one for a team.

So as we do every year we’re bringing back our annual deal grader using the PFF methodology for grading to tell you what we think about how the deals shake up. You’ll get more updated feedback and analysis from our Live Reaction Blog but if you want to see how we see deals compared to each other, here’s the place to be.

Note: We’ll only be grading deals where players have hit the open market. So players cut are fair game, while as players re-signed before 4pm on Tuesday 11th of March will not be.

+2.0: A move that is guaranteed to take your franchise to another level

If they use the same front loaded contracts everyone else uses, 4 contracts that average $4M cap hits for 2014, they can sign about 4 impact players.

Tj Ward probably has a $1M cap hit, Ware & Talib probably $5M each.

$1M+$5M+$5M=$11M leaving them another contract similar to Tj Ward's, maybe two (depending on how far off my assumptions are) to give out before restructuring or cutting other players.

Not sure what you are trying to describe by using front loaded there.

Your numbers are off. For example, TJ Ward's contract averages $5.75. He is getting $14 mil guaranteed. Typically most of the guaranteed money is signing bonus, say $8 mil. A league minimum base salary is $730k. With prorated signing bonus that would be $2.73 mil cap hit in 2014.

There are already reports out there about what these players will make 2014, so no need to make up stuff. One of the guys on Twitter said D Ware will be a 10.25 million caphit this year.

I'm not making anything up... the word is assumption & average are in my post. I think "probably" is in there some where as well. Ware's contract is unique, because it's such a short term, 3 years. doesn't give them a lot of room to work with, but it's the same concept. all together, their cap hits will be substantially less than the avg/yr..... & yes, I meant back loaded, not front.

Well ESPN says Ware will get 13 million this season, 7 next, and I would assume 10 the last year of the contract. I dont see any signing bonus numbers. So it seems pretty straight forward.

So with the Broncos estimated cap availability of 15 million (per Dutch) I am not sure how they are going to get Ward and Talib under the cap without restructuring Manning and maybe some others.

Edit: Spotrac shows them 24 million under the cap.

Look for Clady as a cut/restructure. He is in the 2nd year of his contract with an $8.6 mil cap hit but his signing bonus was only $3 mil so they can clear $6.2 in space by dumping him. Or they can convert most of his 2014 salary to bonus and reduce his cap hit to about $3.4.

Welker is on the last year of his contract so they are stuck unless they extend him. Cutting would clear $6 mil but they are already losing Decker.

Vasquez doesn't save anything to cut.

Von Miller is on the last year of his rookie deal so they would need a big resigning for him.

Demaryus Thomas is in the same boat as Miller.

Manning they could convert salary to bonus and clear about $10 mil. That's major kicking the can and would make his cap next year go to $27 mil.